


It Will Come Around

by renquise



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 20:13:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/141315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renquise/pseuds/renquise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It all starts with fish.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Will Come Around

**Author's Note:**

  * For [prodigy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/prodigy/gifts).



It all starts with fish.

Well, not the fish itself, but the newspaper it was wrapped in.

The ad was right below “Part-time deliveryman required for discreet work” in the help wanted section, five times larger than most in the section, printed in a virulent red.

Though the ink had been partly smudged with fish drippings, the paper translucent, it was still easily legible thanks to the overzealous efforts of the typesetter. “WANTED: MEDIC,” it said, continuing on to ask, “Doctors! Could your dull work of curing the sick and saving people’s lives use more action? Do you have a flexible relationship with the Hippocratic Oath? Can you run pretty fast? If so, RED has a lucrative business opportunity for a man willing to brave the odds! Send applications to …”

He finds out later that the ad had been running in every newspaper in Portland, such that the fish perhaps didn’t have as instrumental a part in his eventual fate as he had previously thought, but the point remains.

He can’t quite identify what pushes him to send off a resume. Perhaps it’s curiosity. Perhaps it’s boredom. Or perhaps it’s a potent combination of the two that short-circuits his normally well-developed sense of self-preservation and sees him dropping an envelope in the mail the next day, not expecting much. But what does he have to lose, really? A minor paediatric practice, a long-estranged fiancée?

In any case, barely a week later, he receives a letter in the mail that simply reads: “CONGRATULATIONS, you have been chosen through a rigourous vetting process (that most certainly didn’t involve monkeys in the mail room) to work in a new team formed by RED in order promote RED’s interests in various exotic locales.”

It’s tantalizingly non-specific, to the point that he goes to the interview just to see what they meant by it.

When he signs a contract for five years, it has the longest section of fine print he has ever seen outside of experimental medicine, written in such brain-numbingly dry prose that you could almost miss choice segments such as “RED bears no responsibility for any injuries, permanent or impermanent, caused by or exacerbated by experimental weaponry of all sorts. However, if any beneficial mutations (i.e. augmented strength, x-ray vision, etc.) occur as a result of RED weaponry or products, RED reserves the right to patent said mutation.”

He reads it all, of course, though he hears the boy at the desk alongside snort and say, “Come on, just show me where to stick my freakin’ John Hancock.”

Though he likes to think of himself as a sensible, grounded individual, he signs the contract (and his name away with it—though he hadn’t been all that fond of it, in any case). The retirement package is generous, though he supposes that it must be because few stay around long enough to take advantage of it.

It’s also the first time he runs into—quite literally—a large man who looks as if his cheap plaid suit is barely managing to contain his mass, the seams straining at the shoulders and around his arms. Which must be his arms, unless the man is bent on smuggling small dogs into RED headquarters inside his jacket sleeves.

The man catches him easily, setting him back on his feet with a firm clap on the shoulder that almost makes his knees buckle. “Little man must watch where he is going.”

Before he can respond that he can’t very well watch where he is going because of certain immense people blocking his way, the man sticks out his hand. “You are Medic. I am Heavy Weapons Guy. We work together, yes?”

Medic automatically holds out his hand to shake, and Heavy’s callused hand envelops his own easily.

Perhaps that’s where it starts.

\--

Medic spends the first few weeks deeply regretting the fact that he had ever picked up that fish-stained newspaper, let alone sent off his resume and gone to the interview.

It’s not the work, per se—the work is fascinating, in its own way. Having access to tissue-regenerating technology was worth the contract in and of itself, even if he hadn’t been desperate to get away from paediatric medicine. The medigun, as they called it, is a marvel of medical technology. Experimental and volatile in its own way, but full of potential. There were refinements, adjustments that Medic could make, especially with the help of a specialist like Enigneer, that could further its use beyond its basic healing capabilities.

Nor is it the judicious use of bone saw needed on the battlefield. Medic gets used to that easily enough.

It’s the fact that his colleagues apparently have the self-preservation instinct usually accorded to very small, very suicidal animals.

And it seems to be rubbing off on him, such that he is currently crouching around the corner from a beeping nest of sentries large enough to tear both Heavy and himself into bloody confetti.

“As a doctor concerned about the welfare of this team, god knows why, my professional opinion is that we will all end up very, very dead if we turn that corner,” he hisses at Heavy, “I can provide you with a more specific diagnosis afterwards, if my brains haven’t been blown out of their rightful place.”

Heavy considers this as the sentry clatters around the corner, barely missing Demoman, who slurs back that if that was the best BLU could do, he could beat them with both hands behind his back, two bottles of scotch in his stomach, and his eye closed. Which would only be slightly more suicidal than their current position.

“Well? You have my recommendation as a doctor, and as a person in possession of most of my senses, unlike everyone else here.”

Heavy hums thoughtfully. “Okay, you are doctor. But I am man with very large gun, and I say we go.” And turns the corner, guns blazing.

Medic considers briefly whether taking a needlegun to a colleague would constitute grounds for terminating his contract.

But follows.

They get out of it, god knows how, and stride into the locker room at the end of the day with only a few minor injuries. Medic pulls off his backpack and places down the medigun, possibly with more vehemence than required.

“With all due respect accorded to a colleague. Heavy. If you decide to charge into a nest of sentries with only the barest warning, do tell me now so that I can finish you here and now, rather than having to run all he way across the battlefield,” he pants, still winded from sprinting all the way across the field. “I’ll even let you specify whether you’d like to go by needlegun or by bone saw.”

Heavy puts his gun down carefully, giving her—it—a fond pat. “Is okay, Sasha took good care of us.”

Of all the bull-headed, stubborn colleagues he could have been stuck with, he had to pick the one with an unhealthy attachment to his gun. Medic kneaded his temples, feeling a headache coming on. “I am not questioning the abilities of your armament.”

“Good.”

“I am merely asking for a little more communication. Some indication ahead of time that you have considered the variables at work and, oh, the large amount of guns pointed at us, and are prepared to make a strategic retreat, if necessary.”

Heavy considers this. “Sasha and I, we do not retreat.”

Fantastic.

“But for doctor, maybe we can try,” Heavy says mildly, not conceding the point, but making a concession nonetheless. "Sasha and I, we are willing to negotiate with reasonable offers."

Medic’s next argument stops halfway out his mouth, and for a moment, he feels off-balance. He had expected a lot more arguing. “I am deeply touched,” he says, exasperated, “But as much as I am fond of my own skin, I would beg you to consider your own, as well. It would be far too much trouble to get used to another partner.”

It isn't a very humourous response, but Heavy laughs, the booming sound expressing all the doubt that a man like him could ever be killed.

\--

Things do change. They’re still throwing themselves headlong into certain death, but it’s usually accompanied by a strategic plan. There are still kinks to be worked out in this system, however, such as Heavy getting bullets stuck in his thigh and not telling Medic about them until hours later.

Medic scolds him all the way to the medical bay, because doesn’t Heavy know that he could get them both killed with this macho routine, continuing while he removes the bullet as Scout watches with a fascination usually reserved for scantily-clad women. “Doesn’t that freaking hurt, man?”

Heavy shrugs, barely wincing as Medic begins the extraction. “Pain is waste of time.”

Medic snorts at that. “Pain is your body’s way of telling you that you have a piece of lead lodged unnaturally in your thigh.” He takes hold of the bullet and deftly removes it, training the healing gun on the wound—fortunately, the bullet tumbling hadn’t damaged too much tissue, nor any major blood vessels. The wound closes up easily, and Medic catches himself sighing in relief. “Might I take this opportunity to remind you that you are not, in fact, bulletproof, and never will be.”

Heavy tests his leg, nodding in satisfaction when everything seemed in order. “Ah, but sometimes when I am with doctor, I am bulletproof,” he says, with the air of someone delivering a profound philosophical argument.

“He’s got you there, doc,” Scout says, jiggling his feet against the examination table.

Medic splutters a bit. “The fact that you are occasionally invulnerable while under the effect of the ubercharge does not negate my primary point. Scout, stop moving your leg and keep the ice on your hamstring, or you’ll just make it worse.”

Scout stops jiggling his leg for all of two seconds. “Naw, doc, but if there’s, like, an exception, it makes for a different way of doin’ things than if it were always true, yeah? Like if you’re sometimes bulletproof, you, like, rely on it or some shit like that.”

Heavy nods. “For once, little man is not talking stupid.”

“Hey, who’re you callin’ little, fatso? Wait, are you callin’ me stupid?”

Medic doesn’t sedate them both when Scout launches himself at Heavy in an ill-fated attempt to put Heavy in a headlock, but it’s a near thing.

\--

The remote locales they fight in are not a problem by any means, though they sometimes make Medic miss his occasional evenings at the chess club, and he sets about finding himself a chess partner, proceeding by order of elimination.

Engineer is a very adequate chess player, with the intelligence and ingenuity necessary to make a challenging opponent, but it is frustrating to play someone who seems to be thinking of something else all the while, only to upturn the table when he rushes off with an apology to his workshop on the tail of an idea.

Soldier insists on narrating the movements of the troops and battalions and on utilizing nonstandard movements for the pieces (most notably, sweeping a hand across the board, saying that Medic’s bishop had just landed on a mine). Spy cheats, naturally. Pyro applies the rules of Parcheesi, and seems confused that there aren’t several levels to the chess board. Sniper and Demoman prefer backgammon, and Scout is out of the question.

Which leaves Heavy.

Heavy is remarkably adept at chess, he learns. The chess pieces are entirely dwarfed by his fingers, but he moves them carefully, with a measured, thoughtful playing style.

Of course, these quiet evenings are inevitably interrupted by Scout vaulting over the table in an attempt to get away from Demoman, who is usually trying to enact revenge for a broken bottle of alcohol, followed soon after by Soldier, whose model plane Demoman had crashed through when he had been gluing down the last piece—or at least, that is what Medic is able to parse from the cacophony of shouting.

He sighs and turns to ask Heavy if he’d like to start over, or continue from their best recollection of the board, but Heavy has already launched himself out of his chair with a roar.

Medic can pinpoint the moment the chase turns into a concerted effort to run away from Heavy by the upwards shift in the pitch of the shouting. He picks up the chess pieces, setting them back on the chess board in the positions they had occupied before they had been interrupted.

There is a great deal of crashing about in the hallway, a few shouts, including “Ow ow ow my arm is not supposed to bend that way, ow,” and Heavy comes back, smiling and dusting off his hands.

“Doctor, it is your turn,” he says, dropping into the kitchen chair, which protests mildly under his weight.

Medic considers asking whether Heavy had maimed anyone for the sake of their chess game, but he decides that anyone with particularly grievous bodily damage would find him eventually, and they had a game to finish.

\--

The abstract strategy in chess is enjoyable, but the challenge of adapting it to the chaos of the battlefield is particularly rewarding, especially when unorthodox strategies come into play.

(On the battlefield, of course. No strategy on the chessboard could be as baffling as Scout charging into battle with a fish. Heavy suggests that their chess games could be more accurate if they were to combine a boxing match with chess. This is ludicrous, of course, but Medic suggests that he could send a message to the BLU base if Heavy wanted to organize a tournament during the off hours. The BLU team is amicable enough, when they aren’t trying to kill them.)

It’s easy to get hooked on the exhilaration of combat, the residual sparks of the ubercharge making his hits quick and deadly, the solid feeling of Heavy at his back as he summarily removes the last of the BLUs from the point.

“All okay, doctor?” Heavy calls back to him when they’ve locked up the point. He unwraps a sandwich and hands half to Medic, who accepts it gratefully, feeling earlier wounds re-emerge from the cover of adrenalin. He wipes a streak of dust from his forehead and puts his bonesaw away with the feeling of a job well done, and only rolls his eyes a bit when Heavy converses with his sandwich about the great feats they have accomplished together.

Medic hears the revving up of a minigun too late, and knows the sound too well to know that it isn’t Sasha.

His heart drops into his belly, and he almost drops the sandwich when he hears the sharp report of a shotgun, and a thump as the BLU Heavy drops to the ground. Heavy racks his shotgun, dark menace shadowing his face. “Is bad manners to interrupt sandvich picnics with doctor,” he says, angling himself to stand between the BLU Heavy and Medic.

Medic is used to Heavy’s swings from cheerful to terrifying, but he feels this moment like a punch to the sternum. The electric realization that Heavy’s anger comes on his behalf courses through his veins, insistent as an ubercharge. To say that he trusts Heavy with his life should be an exaggeration, but somewhere along the way, it had turned into a bone-deep truth.

It’s only when he ambushes the BLU Soldier who was about to put a shovel through Heavy’s head and disembowels him with perhaps more vigour than strictly necessary that he thinks, oh.

Medic leaves the battlefield with the announcement of victory echoing in his ears, far too aware of the pleasant weight of Heavy's hand on his shoulder.

\--

Before he knows it, it’s been a year since the ad. The team’s been moved around a few times, shivering miserably in Viaduct for a short while—though Heavy hadn’t minded the weather—and spent a few weeks in Nucleus that had Medic fearing that they would all grow extra appendages. The inter-team chess-boxing league has flourished, too, and Heavy gained this year’s title after defeating the BLU team’s Heavy with a decisive uppercut and rook and pawn endgame.

It takes a package from RED to realize that it’s been a year. It contains two dozen bottles of suspiciously-colored liquid labelled “Mann’s MAN BREW” and a card saying succinctly, “CONGRATULATIONS, you’re not dead! Happy one-year anniversary of employment with RED.” Medic didn’t even know they made cards for that specific circumstance.

Demoman soon ascertains that the “Man Brew” could easily be called “rubbing alcohol and turpentine,” which most of the team seems to take as a challenge, if anything. The impromptu party doesn’t die down until late at night, after Demoman and Engineer have started building a lopsided trebuchet and Spy and Sniper are competing to see whose Charlie Chaplin impression is best. He eventually retires to the front porch of the base with Heavy and a bottle of vodka from Heavy’s private stash. Or, well, what was left of it by now.

Medic doesn’t notice that he’s slipping sideways until he’s leaning fully on Heavy’s side, his head drooping upon Heavy’s shoulder. The night is almost peaceful, if you filtered out the increasingly inane remarks being shouted between Scout and his counterpart regarding each other’s mothers.

“Sometimes, this—“ Medic gestures expansively, meaning to encompass the dry heat of the desert, the clear skies above, and accidentally encompassing Heavy’s chest when his hand bumps up against it, “—this isn’t bad.”

Heavy nods sagely, as if Medic had stated some great truth of the universe, and sips at his vodka. “Is not so bad. And not bad—is all we can ask for, yes?”

“The drink brings out the philosopher in everyone,” Medic grumbles.

Heavy shrugs in a gesture not unlike a tectonic movement.

All of a sudden, Medic is very conscious of the steady pulse of Heavy’s heartbeat. It seems dreadfully loud. It makes physiological sense for such a large body to have an organ to match, however. Belatedly, Medic acknowledges that the reason he is noticing this at all is that his head has slipped from Heavy’s shoulder to rest on Heavy’s chest. However, he’s far too comfortable to move at the moment.

Medic pats vaguely at what must be Heavy’s arm. “You make a very adequate pillow.”

There is a low rumble of laughter at that, making Medic’s head bounce up and down.

“Of course, you are not merely an adequate pillow. That is simply the qualifier that is most pertinent at the moment. I find you a very adequate colleague, as well,” Medic finds himself clarifying, “And an acceptable chess player.”

“Is good of doctor to say so,” Heavy says in response, shifting so that Medic rests more comfortably.

The deceptive thing about contentment is that it creeps up on you. It comes with more loud-mouthed colleagues and occasional maiming than one might think, but it’s quiet. It starts with things like fish and ends with a settled feeling in one’s bones that Medic hasn’t felt for years.

“Is good,” Medic says simply, feeling Heavy’s hand settle on his shoulder.


End file.
